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Re: Looking for reading material suggestions

Some of this depends on your interests. If you are interested in money and finance, I would recommend "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith and "The Ascent of Money" by Niall Ferguson. I love the classics. Real classics. Like "Huber's New Observations on Bees" or Jan Dzierzon's "Rational Beekeeping", the two most important beekeeping books ever written. Or Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" and Lao Tzu's "Tao Te Ching" and anything by Plato, Aristotle, Epectitus, Pascal etc. As far as more modern bee books, there is "Bee" by Rose-Lynn Fisher, "The Buzz About Bees" by Jürgen Tautz, "Honey Bee Democracy", "The Lives of Bees" and "Wisdom of the Hive" all by Thomas Seeley, "Honeybee Nests: Composition, Structure, Function" and "Honeybees and Wax: An Experimental Natural History"" by H.R. Hepburn.

Re: Looking for reading material suggestions

Bees in America: How the Honey Bee Shaped a Nation by Tammy Horn (now Tammy Horn Potter). Tammy is the State Apiarist for Kentucky. I am about half-way through the book now and am really enjoying it. A very deep dive into America's history with the honey bee.

Re: Looking for reading material suggestions

Originally Posted by Michael Bush

Some of this depends on your interests. If you are interested in money and finance, I would recommend "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith and "The Ascent of Money" by Niall Ferguson. I love the classics. Real classics. Like "Huber's New Observations on Bees" or Jan Dzierzon's "Rational Beekeeping", the two most important beekeeping books ever written. Or Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" and Lao Tzu's "Tao Te Ching" and anything by Plato, Aristotle, Epectitus, Pascal etc. As far as more modern bee books, there is "Bee" by Rose-Lynn Fisher, "The Buzz About Bees" by Jürgen Tautz, "Honey Bee Democracy", "The Lives of Bees" and "Wisdom of the Hive" all by Thomas Seeley, "Honeybee Nests: Composition, Structure, Function" and "Honeybees and Wax: An Experimental Natural History"" by H.R. Hepburn.

Thank you. I am interested in finance.
I read these books already and will check out your suggestions.

Re: Looking for reading material suggestions

I am a bit off here but I think not often enough we stop and meditate on how fortunate we are. One good reminder of that is Solzhenitsyn's "One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich".
I cannot imagine a public library not having a copy but if you travel light:https://www.amazon.com/One-Day-Life-...F8&me=&qid=)**

Re: Looking for reading material suggestions

Originally Posted by Michael Bush

If you are interested in money and finance, I would recommend "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith

Isn't wealth of nations by Adam Smith arguably dated and considered more of a historical reference than a modern economics book? To include is an economics book and not a finance book? I own it, never read it only referenced it, too dry for my taste.

Skeptics Guide to the Universe, How to Know What's Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake, Dr. Stephen Novella.

For fiction, if you haven't read the Harry Potter books then read them. You've seen the movies but the movies leave out so much stuff and outright delete important characters, plus the book ending is very different. If you like science fiction, and you've seen The Martian movie but not read the book, then read the book. The book gets into the science and it does not have some of the ridiculous that ended up in the movie. the movie leaves out five or six of the times where he very nearly died. The book is way funnier, but the movie had to be PG.

Re: Looking for reading material suggestions

Originally Posted by calfreeman

Isn't wealth of nations by Adam Smith arguably dated and considered more of a historical reference than a modern economics book? To include is an economics book and not a finance book? I own it, never read it only referenced it, too dry for my taste.

Not on your life! If we get far too "advanced" in our macro-economic manipulations and screw everything up, and forget about the micro-economic basics as professor Smith set forth in 1776, we will rue the mistake. Things like trillion dollar debt, "demand and demand" instead of "supply and demand", taxation that robs from the producers who make the net national product go up and buys more debt programs instead. Advanced stupidity!

Smith wrote about the natural causes of national ecomomies, and how the government keeping it's hands off makes the best environment for efficient business and correct pricing.

Liberals = moochers electing looters who rob from producers. They sure are "advanced", just ask them. If everyone did what they do, we'd all be homeless beggars with nothing to steal from anyone.

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On the topic of good books, probably not on ebooks yet, but Brother Adam's 3 books on beekeeping are some of the best. I spend a lot on local flower guides, too, from all over the Western states.

Re: Looking for reading material suggestions

Liberals = moochers electing looters who rob from producers. They sure are "advanced", just ask them. If everyone did what they do, we'd all be homeless beggars with nothing to steal from anyone.

This completely ruined your statement with a couple of fallacies.

Like I said I own the book, if you can give me an educated opinion that does not revolve around political attacks I might respect your opinion and read it. (I am neither liberal or conservative if that helps you understand my perspective without being offended.)

Re: Looking for reading material suggestions

Originally Posted by calfreeman

Isn't wealth of nations by Adam Smith arguably dated and considered more of a historical reference than a modern economics book? To include is an economics book and not a finance book? I own it, never read it only referenced it, too dry for my taste.

Unfortunately, more often than not, reading such books is not that much fun. I had no choice in the past but now - whenever possible - I let way more intelligent people give me the essence and, time permitting, complement with parts or whole texts. I don't know about you but I get much more this way!
(It is worth reading further, I am not the author.)

"What can I tell you about The Wealth on Nation? It's a sweeping book, a grandiose book an unbelievably textured and detailed book that is beautifully written with a deep concern and interest in the human nature, it rewards reading it even today! However, I don't recommend you read all of it, is well over 1,000 pages and he has a tendency, as authors had in that time, to sort of go of in some digression for twenty or thirty pages before he comes back to the main point so you can be reading along and just thinking: I don't know were this is going! My favorite digression is one called A Digression Concerning the Variation in The Value of Silver During the Course of The Last Four Centuries and it goes on about 90 pages and then comes back to the main argument. So, if you pick up the Wealth, just remember that kind of rambles in places."

I find this relevant as well:

"Why is it so rewarding to read Adam Smith? I think is largely because Smith is willing to avoid formulas, he is willing to make disturbing blank statements, he is willing to avoid being doctrinaire. Smith is not an ideologue, many people who quote Adam Smith are much more ideologically... one track than Adam Smith ever was. To give you couple of examples to Smith willingness to be appropriately cynical and appropriately thoughtful about everything, in the later parts of the Wealth of Nations he describes different roles for government and he is not, he clearly is not a pure laissez faire a physiocrat let it go kind of person. Among this chapter he talks about government's role in national defense, in law enforcement, in setting copyrights and patents in enforcing contracts, in regulating mortgages in issuing control over paper money and the banking system. He proposed taxing alcohol to reduce the consumption cause is not good for people. He proposed limits on the the rate of interests to make sure people don't borough money at a really high interest and not be able to pay it back. He talks about how it might be unrealistic to have free trade right away and unrealistic to have trade all the time and sometimes you are going to need to do things for foreign policy reasons. He talks about public work projects like railways and canals.* He talks about education and how it is important for the government to provide education for the future.

So in all those ways if you think about Smith as someone who says: just let that market rip, you're wrong; I mean that is not how Adam Smith saw the world, he was a practical guy, a Scottish philosopher he was clearly willing to see the world in much more nuanced kinds of ways than that. To give you a sense of the consistency of his skepticism you know he was not someone who sort of thought, as some characterize Smith 'well, just leave it to the business people, business people are smart'. That's not right, Smith was not willing to say to anyone 'well, you now, will just leave it in their hands'. He really took serious this notion that self-interest is going to be greediness and we are going to keep it under control."